


international geniuses

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Kid Natasha Romanov, Kid Tony Stark, MIT Era, Male-Female Friendship, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, POV Natasha Romanov, Red Room (Marvel), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-20 16:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19995013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: 1987, Natasha Romanov is on... holiday and she meets Tony Stark at MIT. Enough said.OR,He’s sitting on a creased leather couch like it’s a throne and he’s a king.He’s a dried out, cynical husk even at seventeen, she can see it in his eyes, the way the guys around him are clustered like vultures, like disciples, in a strange way. They’re all clutching red solo cups filled with piss-beer, and there’s a matching, hungry look in their eyes.He looks casual, on the other hand. He’s bored, leaning back. While the others laugh and make jokes, he just watches the cigarette smoke drift up from his hand.





	1. king

Natasha meets Tony his senior year of college, her... fourteenth year of the Red Room.

Sometimes the Red Room gives her time off, a holiday of sorts. She thinks it’s for social development, you can't teach everything about human behaviour in a classroom. They drop her off in New York, and tell her roam for the next three months. Usually the girls only get a week. They trust her because she is the best. She will not desert Russia.

...Right?

She stays in New York for half a week but gets bored. It's too busy, there's so much going on but she can't tap into it, it’s a channel that goes right past her. 

Then, as she’s counting the days until she can go back and riding the subway to pass the time, maybe gain some knowledge for a future mission, she meets a group of students from MIT.

“I’m Kent,” he tells her, pushes his glasses up his nose. “What’s yours?”

She freezes for a moment, unsure. Her teaches call her Natalie, but that doesn't feel right, not here, not talking to this little smidge of a ma. The western diminutive of Natalie is Natasha. Nicknames could be Nat, Tasha, Tash. Common enough, but not obviously so. 1“Natasha. I’m Natasha,” she smiles, like it’s true. 

“Yeah,” one says, “come back with us, there's a whole lotta fun in Massachusetts.”

She shrugs, figures it’s something to do and it won't kill her. “Sure,” she says to the nerd that's trying to chat her up. “Okay, I'll do it.”

She likes it on campus better, the air is cleaner, the people are less intimidating. They're all just kids. The same age as her, eighteen years old but still _so_ different.

She hangs around for a while, in cafes and bars, all the popular student hot spots. Sometimes, she can sneak into the back of a classroom.

The lectures are great fun, she learns so much, about science or chemistry, psychology is boring, she knows everything already, but still. It's fun.

Then, she gets invited to a party by the nerds who she's 'couchsurfing' with, it’s the practice to stay temporarily in a series of other people's homes, typically making use of improvised sleeping arrangements.. She's not sure how they got the invitation but doesn't question, and goes.

…

Parties are pretty boring if you don't know anyone, Natasha decides. Everyone just drinks and laughs and talks, doesn't really do anything. She knows how to mingle, how to seduce, all of that. But, what's the point? No one here has any gain.

She's debating leaving when she sees him.

He’s sitting on a creased leather couch like it’s a throne and he’s a king.

He’s a dried out, cynical husk even at seventeen, she can see it in his eyes, the way the guys around him are clustered like vultures, like disciples, in a strange way. They’re all clutching red solo cups filled with piss-beer, and there’s a matching, hungry look in their eyes.

He looks casual, on the other hand. He’s bored, leaning back. While the others laugh and make jokes, he just watches the cigarette smoke drift up from his hand.

He taps the ash out onto the arm of the couch, and then dust it off onto the carpet. Doing so, he looks up. Locks eyes with her.

She can’t move, she won’t move. Normal people would look away. She doesn't even blink. There’s nothing, for a moment, and then he smiles.

It's the smile of someone like her, someone smart and tired and someone that sees through everything, until all that's left is the void.

Look into the void long enough, it looks back.

She’s heard that somewhere, she's not sure where. 

...

It’s later, and she’s standing on the porch, in the frigid night air. There’s a couple sloppily making out around the side of the house, but she doesn't care. She needs air.

“Alright there?” a voice asks from behind her, she turns, it’s him. He’s abandoned his followers and is standing there in his acid-wash jeans and MIT hoodie, with eyes that are too soft to make sense.

Her arm itches, She feels overdressed in her jacket and jeans.

He blinks, twice, and she realises she hasn’t said anything.

“Yes, yeah,” she remembers to use a causal spelling of yes. It makes her seem more normal. American. 

He tilts his head, smiles, again. “That’s good.” he stuffs his hands in his pockets, rolls on the balls of his feet in an odd rocking motion. “I saw you in there.”

“Me too,” Natasha says back. “You smiled.”

“I did. You were looking.”

“I was,” she returns, indulging in this odd little game. “You were smoking.”

“So I was. Why?”

“I don't know. You don’t seem like someone who smokes.” She loses the game. 

“Really. What does someone who smokes look like?”

She laughs, a little. “Not like you. You get your fix on work binges and...ooh, a good line of coke every once and awhile, I’m guessing.”

He straightens up. “How do you know that?” She’s hit a nerve. Her first instinct is to push harder, she has to restrain herself.

“Ah. well, you’re smart. Have many early accomplishments, that speaks to the binges. You get tense, you relax by working, but sometimes, that doesn't work, does it? And then you're at a party like this one, or maybe something a little more high-priced than,” she looks around, “a second-rate frat party. There’s some coke floating around, you take it. It’s a way to unwind, it realises that energy in your chest.”

He bites his lip. “Spot on,” he says finally. “That's good.”

“I know it is,” she raises her eyebrows back. A sudden fit of daring takes her. “Wanna do me?”

His mouth drops, “what,” he stammers.

“Do you wanna read me?”

“Oh,” he says. “Right. Yeah, sure, I’ll have a crack.”

“Okay...immigrant, you have an accent, but your trying to hide it. I’m guessing Slavic, Russian? Now, you don't normally get much discrimination around that sort, so I'm guessing _you_ are ashamed. Poverty, maybe, hey, you mighta been communist. Apart from that, I think you're smart. You're actual smart, what the real Alumni of this stupid university are made out of. You don't understand people, and that's okay, because... neither do I.”

“Huh,” is all she says.

“Did I get it right?”

She thinks, for what feels like more than a moment, but really, it’s only a half-second. “Yes. You might have.”

“Right pair we are, a Russian genius and an American one.”

She laughs, “oh, that's a wonderful summary.” And it is.

…

They’re at the Massachusetts Gun Range one day, because Tony keeps going on about making them, knowing how to use them, so she gives in and goes along.

She’s slumped in a chair, watching, well, kind of. She’s reading a magazine, some trashy thing she nicked from that frat party a while back. It's a good prop.

He’s got a gun in his hand, cigarette out, held between two fingers but not to his mouth. His earmuffs are around his neck, hers are firmly over her ears.

“You fire yet, rich boy?” she draws in a (not) fake Russian accent.

He huffs out a laugh, considers the gun held slack in his hand and the cigarette in the other.

“Here,” he holds the cig out to her.

She raises her eyebrows and takes it, “what am I meant to do with this?” she says in her American voice, lifting one earmuff from her ear, flipping over a page in her magazine.

“Aren't you the one that smokes?”

“I never said that,” she argues, and lifts the cigarette to her lips. It tastes like wildfires on the hills and late nights in the dark.

“Ah-ha,” he laughs, “but I'm right.”

“Oh, you always are, you American genius,” Natasha swoons in her accent.

Tony turns around and fires.

…

Blam, blam, Tony never misses.

It's his first time, but he never misses.

...

“You should cut your hair,” Tony says, one night, as he’s laid sprawling on the bed in his dorm. The lights are hurting her eyes in a chemical, burning scorch, so she reaches up and flips them off, then flops back into the dark. Tony doesn't say anything about it.

“What,” she laughs, mouth open.

“Cut it,” he says, twists a lock around his finger, tugs it a little until she winces and bats his hand away. “Trust me, it’ll be cool.”

“Oh sure it will, bald is the new black.”

He scoffs and hits her shoulder. “No! Like...shoulder length, I think.”

She considers for a moment. “All right.”

“Now?” he asks, propping himself up on the bed with one elbow.

“No,” she rolls her eyes, “it’s four in the morning.”

“So?” he asks.

She laughs, rolls over and tucks herself under the covers next to him, and laughs some more. She doesn't mind sleeping without a handcuff tonight.

...

He’s wonderfully free, wonderfully dark, wonderfully reckless. She loves it. She’s never been reckless, her life has been a series of carefully made moves and manipulation.

He dips fries in shakes and even as she squeals in disgust, shoves one into her mouth, and yes, she likes it.

He turns up at three with a bottle of vodka, so, obviously, the only logical choice is to get drunk in the middle of the night then get up for classes the next day. 

They do cut her hair, he takes her to a fancy, high-price salon in New York that probably cost more money than she's ever seen. The look on the hairdressers face is jaw-dropping when she just asks for a plain, no bells and whistles cut. Still, she does it. Natasha looks at it for a moment in the mirror, then just nods and grabs her bag.

They go camping, out in the wilds of upstate New York for some reason, probably Tony’s on a nature kick. There’s a lake some ten minutes away from the camp, so the only logical conclusion is to go skinny dipping. The water is cold, but it burns like an old friend. Tony whines the entire time and then ditches after three minutes because _'hey, I'm already wrinkly enough down there_ _!'_ She laughs and laughs and floats on her back to stare up at the sky.

Tony ditches his nature kick for a bar one some time after that, so they go to the college bars, eat pizza and drink beer, get drunk to the karaoke. There’s a particularly memorable instance where the entire bar slings their arms around each other, and slurs the words to _Take On Me._

They get in a bar fight, eventually. She still has no idea what is was about, they just joined in. Tony jumps up on the table and kicks pints like footballs, lotta help that does. Natasha punches a man on the face then uses her thighs to take him down (not permanently, that would be too suspicious.)

Then, red-and-blue lights flash and, oh, they run. Tony grabs her hand a block or two down and yanks her into an alley. 

“That….was, fun” he huffs, doubled over. “Didn’t know...you cou — could fight.”

Natasha shrugs, brushes some glass off his shoulder, and lies, “did kung fu when I was a kid.”


	2. deported

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she's leaving

“I'm leaving,” she announces. Her three months are nearly up. The Red Room will come for her soon. She doesn't want Tony to see that. 

“What!” Tony bolts upright on the couch, hair in disarray. “What do you mean,  _ ‘leaving’?!” _

“I have to go. Getting deported.” She is, in a way.

“I can — I can help,” he says, standing up.

“No. You can’t, Tony,” Natasha says, shakes her head.

“I can! I can! My father — I, I, we have pull with the government.”

“That doesn't matter, Tony,” she drops her head, lets her hair, short as it is, to hide her face. “I — I need to go back. I have to.”

“Why,” he says, and it sound as close to raw, honest feelings as she’s ever heard.

“Because this isn't my world,” he pants. “I'm Russian, not American. Remember? This town isn't big enough for both of us.”

“Yes, it is,” he pleads. “We can make it enough.”

“I can't, Tony. Science won't let us close to each other, we will self-combust or flame out or any multitude of things."

"I need you. You're the only one who's ever understood."

She shakes her head, softly, slowly, sweetly. "But I'm not the only one who ever will."

"Where? When?" he says, desperately. There's something close to those hungry boys in his eyes, but it's _sharper_.

"You're looking in the wrong places. You ain't gonna find them in frat parties."

"I found you there."

"I'm not your happily ever after."

"I want you to be, platonically."

"You're smart, Tony, but you need to realise that you aren't the only smart person in the world."

"I know they're there, but they're so — so,  _ boring,  _ all they care about is research and papers and not having fun, not living when they can."

"I'm sorry, Tony," she gets up, "but maybe they are living. Maybe that academic brilliance is okay. No one will tease you, now."

He looks down. She’s hit too close, again. She sighs, mentally. She keeps stuffing up. Being human is harder than they teach you. 

The door that shuts behind her sounds too quiet for what just happened.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

She heard that somewhere, too. 

…

He pounds on her door at two, relatively early for their late-night meetings. When Nat opens it, she’s expecting anger, sadness, not the smell of  _ at least  _ two bottles of... tequila?

“Don’t go,” he pleads, wide desperate eyes, mussed hair. God knows how he got over here. He's slowly losing his grip on the doorframe and falling inside.

She catches him, closes the door not to wake her neighbours, and puts him on the couch.

“Fuck you," he gasps. "Fuck you, Nat. I've looked. I looked."

"Okay," she placates. "Sure, Tony."

“You're a fuckin’ shadow,  _ Nat _ ,” he spits. “You come and you go, just like that. The sun goes down and you’re gone. You’re going to leave me.”

She closes her eyes, Tony never misses.

“Why does it matter,” she says back, if only Madame could see her now, she’s irrationally angry.

“Why does it matter?” he snarls. “It matters because I need yo _ u. I need you!” _

“You've done perfectly fine for seventeen years without me, I am not your therapist, I'm anything but. You’ll be fine, Tony. You're a genius, huh? My genius.”

“That implies that we have a relationship. You can't have a relationship if you’re gone.”

“Yes I can. Yes, I will,” she promises, if only to calm him down.

Later that night, she gets a glass of water in him and shoves him into a taxi with the address of his dorm. Rhodey’s waiting on the other end to pick him up, and she’s glad he has a real friend other than her. Not those hungry boys she saw when she first met him. They’ll suck him dry, of money, of will to live, of anything but drugs and parties and booze.

She leaves a post-it note on his pillow, she has to jimmy the lock first but it’s no big deal for her.

_ do yourself a favour, tony, forget me. _

_ faithfully  _ _ your genius, _

_ n _


	3. done

She watches him, watches him party and make scandals, mess around. He calls it living. She doesn't know what to call it. Then, he gets a little older, turns thirty, and she watches him  _ work _ . She watches him release new tech, kill as many people as he saves. She watches SI climb up the ladder faster than other companies can slide down. 

He takes down rivals and rouge, corrupt business partners, does it with a pretty woman on his arm and a drink in his hand.

She watches him take over the world, make it his.

Then, he dies and comes back three months later. There’s a burning, laser focus to him when he announces the decline of Stark Industries weapons. He kills Obadiah (not officially, but it’s obvious) and announces Iron-Man. 

She’s not surprised.

Tony  _ never _ misses.

….

After the fall of the USSR she does freelance for a few years, but the Americans notice her. She’s living in Budapest, pretending to be a university student studying art. It reminds her of back then, 1987. It's a bit different now, social media and the internet have changed the world.  _ She _ doesn't look so different, it's hard to age with some watered-down version of the super serum running through your veins. 

They sent a young blond guy, he’s nice, smiles at the women behind the counter at the grocery down the street. She thinks they might be friends, if they were different people with different stories. Huh, the Americans must underestimate her. She notices him following her for two days. She lets him think she doesn't know until they’re alone on the last train service at eleven pm.

“Hey, Agent,” she calls out in perfect English.

Agent freezes minutely, he stops flipping through the book he’s pretending to read.

“Agent,” she calls again, sing-song. He looks up, muttering something in Hungarian. “Yeah, don’t try it. You here to terminate me?”

He doesn't say anything for a moment. Then, “no, otherwise I would have taken you out yesterday when you spent forty-three minutes sitting in front of a window flipping through TV.” His voice has the familiar, Midwestern drawl of someone that she used to know.

She grins, “yeah, I'm kidding. Did you like the tour I took you on? All the sights of Budapest in two days, pretty cool, huh?”

He blinks, “yeah. It was great.”

“Good. So, what exactly are your intentions with me then? Be gentle, by the way. This is my first time with such a handsome stranger like you.” She gets up, walks across the carriage to him.

“We want you. SHIELD, that is. Heard of us?”

“Of course, I would be a lousy freelancer if I didn't know all the major intelligence agencies in the world.”

“What do you think, then?”

She pursed her lips, “let me think about it.”

He leans back, and something in the way he’s sitting, in his eyes, maybe, reminds her of that night she met Tony. “Hopefully you make the right decision.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

He leans forward again, and Tony is gone. “You can guess.” The train slows, a platform coming into sight. “This is my stop, bye, Widow.” He gets up, waits by the doors as they open. He has hearing aids on, Natasha notices. Useful.

“Natasha,” she calls out in a fit of irrationality. “I want to be — my name is Natasha.”

“Okay, Natasha,” he says, one foot on the train, the other on the platform. The doors ding at him, and he yells, “I’m Clint!” As they shut, nearly crushing his leg.

The next day, she sits on her balcony, it’s a warm, fresh summer morning. It feels prophetic. She signs out  _ YES  _ to the hotel next door, fingers large and pointing.  _ I HAVE WORKED WITH AMERICANS BEFORE. WHEN IS MY FLIGHT.  _

...

SHIELD doesn't know about them, about 1987. So, when she gets her next mission in 2010, she doesn't say anything, just accepts it with a nod.

It goes well enough, she's a bit nervous at first. But, he doesn't notice her hiding behind Pepper, well, not enough to care about. She think he’s chasing her for sex, but then, she remembers who he is, how he used to do these things for the pure scandal of it, and thinks  _ no one can change that much. _

…

“That all, Mr. Stark?” she asks professionally, turning towards the door anyways.

“Yeah, Natasha,” he calls out from behind her.

“Natalie,” she corrects, back still to him, voice not wavering.

“No,” he says, and  Nat Natasha Natalie  Black Widow freezes. This better be a joke. “I don’t think so.” his voice is almost scathing. 

She pivots on her heel, arranging her face to look different, in the slightest, unnerving ways. “Mr. Stark?” she asks, “what do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Tony says, getting up out of his chair. Natasha is reminded of a seventeen-year-old on a leather couch. Now the king metaphor is much more literal.  _ “I mean, _ your name is Natasha, not Natalie, and in 1987, you were my best friend.”

She opens her mouth, no sound comes out. She tries again. “I...I — you must have me confused.” 

“I also know you thought that it would take a _ post-it note  _ for me to  _ forget _ ?”

“Please, Tony,” she whispers, clutches the files under her fingers until they turn white.she stares at her hands, at the scar she got 30 years ago because of Tony’s nature kick.

“No, Nat. No. You don't get to push me away again. You don't get to leave again.”

“I had to,” she bites back, “you don't understand.”

“Bullshit. I call bullshit.”

“I had to go, Tony!” she yells, it bounces off the walls. If Madame could see her now.

“ _ Why _ ?” he yells back, and the secretary outside pokes her head to see them, Nat takes one step back and shuts the door.

She sighs, heavily, exhales through her nose. “I had three months, that's all.”

“So what, I was a mission, seduce the sad white boy with the money and the legacy?”

“No, Tony,” she closes her eyes, hides her face in her hair, so much longer now. Her handlers had been furious, that was not authorized. “You were… you were a vacation, Tony. That's all. I just... ended up at MIT. it was the best accident I ever made."

Her words not not calm him. “Oh, your summer break, then?” he hisses. “Couldn’t you go to Cancun, like everyone else?”

“I was a spy!” she explodes. “I was a fucking spy, but I had no choice. I was four fucking years old when they took me and I was eighteen years old when they lost me. Not that they knew that, though. They lost me the first day I met you but I kept playing along for another four years until the union fell.”

“I knew you were a spy, Nat. I've known for years and I knew then.”

She creases her brow, “how.”

He shrugs, sometimes, you would get bad dreams. You’d bang your hand against the headboard. You'd mutter about Madame and ballet, also, you didn't...act like normal people. You were either too stiff or too fluid, you didn't get slang. I did some research after you left, I figured you were some sort of agent, that or a robot. I went with agent."

"Good choice," is all she can say. "It was too early for that then, anyway."

"Although, really, if you just end up with a traumatised girl, why bother training from a young age?”

“Because I'm the best,” she responds, steely-sure. 

“Oh really, how come I saw though you as soon as you walked into that gym, huh?”

“Well, you are a genius, Mr. Stark.” She feels eighteen again, she feels light again, without all that hair. 

“An American one, eh Russia?” he laughs, and she’s back on that cold porch for just a second.

“Yeah, Tony,” she says, almost ruefully. “You never miss.” 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for reading!!!
> 
> bye!!!
> 
> -arabellagaleotti


End file.
